Hiya!

Welcome back, everyone. Glad you could join me and I hope you have a happy Sunday. For those of you party out for this whole Super Bowl thing, drink responsibly. *sternly wags finger*

So as per the usual, major thanks to all those who have reviewed and given their input, feedback, and opinions. I know I say it a lot, but it really does mean a lot to me that you guys have stuck with this story so long. Every time someone drops in and goes "hey, so I know this story's like 80 chapters long or something, but I just found it this weekend and I binged ALL OF IT"...I'm frankly quite touched.

Basically, every alert I get of a new review leaves me tickled pink :)

Glad everyone is rejoicing over the return of the Snily train! Woo-woo!

If Someone Cared Enough

Chapter Ninety-Two: Mulling Things Over

Severus scratched his head, dragging his quill across another name in his notebook to cross it out. The journal was a cluttered mess of thought-webs and lists, scribbles littering the margins with various details and facts that either validated or disproved one of his previous theories.

"No, he wouldn't work either…" Severus mumbled, re-dipping his quill.

Lily perked up, turning her back to the mystery series marathon that captured her attention just moments before, "Who wouldn't work? What are you doing?"

Severus cursed as a blot of ink dripped off his quill, smearing one of the names.

"Well, he was ruled out anyway," he muttered, dabbing it with a napkin; how he wished he would turn seventeen already so he could use his wand at home to vanish irritating mistakes like this, "I'm creating a list of potential horcrux holders. Reg was pretty sure there's more than the ones we destroyed, and I doubt You-Know-Who would keep it on him. It would be too risky; if someone managed to kill his current self, having his other soul fragments nearby would just increase their chances of destroying all of him and preventing his resurrection."

Lily turned off the tv; suddenly she could care less who murdered the operatic ingénue the very after she unintentionally stole the solo away from the famous soprano, "So you think Vold—"

"Try not to say his name," Severus warned, "Dumbledore thinks he could have enchanted his name to summon him to all dissenters who speak it."

Lily's eyes grew wide, "You really think he can?"

"Check out the latest story," Severus instructed, gesturing to the Prophet page splayed out nearby, "A whole family was slaughtered during a gathering when You-Know-Who's followers suddenly appeared—right in the middle of their living room. The sole survivor was a neighbor; according to him, they had just been discussing You-Know-Who right before it happened. It wouldn't be that hard to enchant a name; technically all spells are just magic attached to specific words, this just replaces verbs like 'to burn' with pronouns like someone's name."

Lily hugged herself, "So no mentioning his name, okay."

She walked over to Severus to peek at his notes, "Still…it's a little unnerving that he's got so much power to have invented that ability…"

"Oh, I hardly doubt he invented it himself," Severus said dismissively, "He's elbow deep in countless tomes of dark magic, no doubt. Probably raided Gaunt's home when he framed the man and took anything that's ever been passed down in that family from the Salazar bloodline. Inventing all his own spells would take time, time I doubt he wants to waste when he can find shortcuts no matter the cost."

"Case in point," Severus said, "He could have dedicated time and effort to researching the philosopher's stone like Flamel and lived centuries with nary a side effect. Instead he uses dark magic to tear his soul apart and hide it for whenever he's defeated simply because it's quicker, dooming himself to the horrible consequences of living a half-life as more corpse than man."

"One of his soul fragments also tried to revive itself when the original wasn't even dead," Lily pointed out, harkening back to the diary's plan, "Yeah, he doesn't strike me as the kind to hole up in a library doing his own work if he can help it."

Severus snorted, "And the worst part is, he probably doesn't even see it as lazy to take all these shortcuts and use dark magic to make things easier. Chances are, he's so entitled as 'the last heir of Slytherin' that he thinks it's his birthright have it all handed to him, like barmy pureblood centuries ago invented this stuff just so he could come along and use it to realize his 'full potential' or whatever other such nonsense."

Severus scoffed, "Probably thinks himself some wizarding messiah, here to free wizards from the expectation to use their magic responsibly."

Lily chuckled, "Yes, it must be so hard for all these blood fanatics to be expected to act like decent people. 'Oh no, I can't use my powers to torture and harm anyone I disagree with or who's different from me! Poor me'!"

Severus smirked, "What a travesty."

"So you were saying," Lily said, bringing them back to the original topic, "You think You-Know-Who likely gave his horcrux to one of the Death Eaters?"

"Or hid it somewhere unlikely to be searched," Severus answered, "Though he'd need a great deal of enchantments and wards to keep anyone from ever uncovering it. I doubt he'd hide all of them though; make all your plan B's too complicated to access and how can you expect your followers to put them into action should something happen to you? No, I think he'd got his most important ones hidden where not even his most loyal can find them, and then any others on standby with someone trusted as the first resort should things ever go awry."

"What ones would he consider his most important?" Lily asked.

"The locket," Severus said, tapping a rough scribble of it in his notebook next to rather unflattering caricature of Potter with stink lines coming off of him, "It belong to his mother and is believed to be the famed relic of Salazar Slytherin himself, akin to Rowena's Diadem or Gryffindor's Sword. Not only that, it belonged to his mother, someone I think Riddle both reveres and abhors because she gave him life, but sullied his heritage by having him fathered by a muggle."

"I bet," Severus went on, "Riddle found it a great indignity that a piece of his heritage was bartered off for some meager coins, probably madder still that it was being hoarded by a Hufflepuff that sat in gluttonous luxury preening like a peacock while he struggled all his life in abject poverty."

"So you think Riddle prizes that horcrux above all others," Lily surmised.

"Undoubtedly," Severus confirmed, "It will probably the most heavily guarded, intended to require a great deal of skill to acquire. But it wouldn't surprise me if he's got one more squirreled away in much the same matter. Then of course there's Helga's Cup."

"That's five, Sev," Lily whispered, her eyes round like teacup saucers, "Five horcruxes, Sev. five times he split his soul…do you really think he went that far?"

Severus nodded gravely, "I'd bet my magic on it. He wants immortality, something he can't achieve unless he finds a loophole around death. As the Dark Lord, he's got a great deal of enemies now; people will always be trying to kill him for good. He'll want more than one failsafe to ensure he comes back every time he's defeated."

"I don't even think he'll stop at six," Severus admitted grimly, "If anything, it is my belief he's aiming for seven."

"Seven?" Lily gasped, "How many times can a soul be split?"

"A soul doesn't have an finite measurement, Lily," Severus stated, "It can probably be broken into as many splintered fragments as the users wishes. It just keeps getting more corrupted as you go."

Lily looked ill, "But why seven?"

"It's the most powerful magical number," Severus elaborated, flipping to another page in his notes, "Seven is the latest age magic manifests itself in wizarding children before they're declared squibs. Stirring anti-clockwise every seventh stir increases the success of many potions. There seventh month is considered the time when magical cores are strongest. And there were seven snakes on the door to the inner sanctum of the Chamber of Secrets, I saw it on our way in. He needs all the power and luck he can get to ensure he can't even be truly killed. He must believe that using the strongest number in magic will increase his odds."

Lily scanned the page with a frown, not liking the ever-increasing dread building in her stomach, "So there was the diary, and the diadem, there's still the locket, along with the cup. That's four…what's the fifth, then?"

"I think I know," Severus said, pulling out a slip of paper from the back of his notebook.

It was an old newspaper clipping, the aged paper kept intact purely by magic alone at this point, the paper yellowing and wrinkled, weathered down with age. In it, a man grinned maniacally at the viewer, his crooked, rotted teeth bared in a crazed smile as he screamed and fought the shackles around his wrists."

"Meet Marvolo Gaunt," Severus introduced with derision, this picture is from the day of his big arrest, before his daughter Merope drugged Riddle Sr. with a love potion."

Lily grimaced at the unsightly man in the image, "I doubt Riddle would have been nearly as charming and charismatic if he'd inherited his looks from that side of the family."

Severus hummed in agreement, absent mindedly touching his face, "Shame the genes for looks tend to favor the father."

Lily leaned over and kissed Severus's nose, "I adore every feature."

Severus smiled inwardly before tapping the photo, "See what Gaunt's got on his hand?"

Lily studied the picture closely, "A ring?"

"Salazar's ring," Severus stated, "At least that is what he was claiming in the report given by Bob Ogden when Gaunt and Morfin attacked the man. He was incredibly proud of it."

"It's connection to Slytherin certainly would make it tempting to Riddle," Lily mused, "What makes you think he got a hold of it?"

"I have my reasons," Severus answered cryptically, casting a sidelong glance at Lily, "Now, I'm not proud of this, but remember when Simone stunned Slughorn?"

"Hard to forget fearing we'd be expelled for it," Lily said sardonically.

Severus winced, "Right…well, you know how Slughorn was in and out of the hospital wing for headaches from the knock to the back of his head when he fell? He sort of made an awful fuss about it and it drove Pomfrey mad so she started giving him big draughts of pain potions in the evenings just to shut him up."

"That's why he'd look so out of it at dinner," Lily recalled, surprised she never made the connection before.

Severus nodded, hesitant to go forward, "Yes, well…I was still recovering in the wing during that time and…he was pretty out of it, so I…may have done a little snooping."

Lily narrowed her eyes, "You mean you used Legilimency."

"Just for a moment," Severus insisted, "This is rather important, Lily. He has information on Riddle that we don't."

Lily sighed, looking very put upon, "I don't have to agree with your every move to understand its importance, Sev. What did you find?"

"Riddle asked Slughorn about the Horcruxes," Severus revealed, "And Slughorn told him, the daft fool. He couldn't for the life of him see anything wrong with telling an overly ambitious student about the darkest magic possible."

"And get that's not all," Severus went on softly, leaning in close, "He was wearing the ring in that memory…"

A sharp intake of breath came from Lily, "So he'd already stolen it from his family."

"Probably the day he framed his uncle for murder," Severus said, "But if he was wearing it when he spoke to Slughorn, then he hadn't corrupted it yet. However, with how important it probably was to him that he'd bother to steal it, I wouldn't put it past him to have made it a horcrux eventually."

"I can't believe Professor Slughorn would just up and tell him that," Lily murmured in dismay, "I would have expected him to have some common sense."

"You give him more credit than I do," Severus muttered, "Riddle was a part of Slughorn's little club, so clearly Slughorn thought Riddle marked for greatness or fame. He's known to be quite accommodating to his 'little slugs' if he thinks they'll feel indebted enough to him to return the favor with the gifts and perks he seeks."

"Still," Lily said, rubbing her brow, "It just so…incredibly stupid…"

Severus smirked, "That's what fame seeking does to people; just look at Potter. 'Oh I think I'll turn into a bloody deer and take on a basilisk! What could go wrong'?"

Lily giggled, "You have to admit he did a fairly decent job of keeping it at bay."

"Only because I warned him not to look it in the eye," Severus scoffed, "How did he and Black ever get out of charges for being unregistered as an animagus? I missed that while unconscious."

Lily rolled her eyes, "Dumbledore convinced us not to discuss that with the Aurors."

Severus sighed, "Of course, can't have his golden boys expelled when they're of such use to him fighting You-Know-Who."

Lily patted him on the shoulder, "To be fair, he protected you from an investigation too. Clearly he's starting to see you're just as important as those two."

Severus let out a snort, "Great; I can become his favorite pawn."

"So what else are you working on?" Lily asked, wisely changing the subject.

Severus gestured to his list of names, "Like I said, at least one horcrux has to be with a follower of his. Lucius was trusted with the diary, though clearly not informed of what it did, otherwise he never would have let it out of his sight. That means one of the other horcrux might be in a Death Eater's possession, all with the fool being none the wiser of what it is."

"So who do you think most likely?" Lily inquired.

"Honestly, not many of his followers lend themselves to the ability to carry out such an important task," Severus confessed, "He's got plenty of purebloods ready to serve him, but frankly many of them are infallibly stupid; inbreeding not helping. Crabbe and Goyle senior are simpletons, Yaxley and Macnair are dutiful but also impulsive and showy, they put themselves under the radar too much to be trusted to hold onto something when the ministry could serve them a search warrant at any moment."

"Then there's Rookwood," Severus went on, "Initially, he seemed like the perfect candidate; his position in the ministry proves he can be unassuming and feign innocence enough to not be suspected. But as an unspeakable, he's in charge of the most highly guarded and classified items in the ministry; random sweeps of their vaults to ensure no one's wander off with something must be as common as surprise drug tests."

"How do you know so many of them are Death Eaters?" Lily questioned, looking over the list. There were quite a bit of people on it.

Severus gave a humorless grin, "I've met most of them during Lucius early attempts to recruit me. It's not like they fear being revealed by new initiates; Lucius made it pretty clear that if anyone was ever ratted out by an anonymous tip, they'd consider all potential new recruits culpable and eliminate us all. They can always find fresh meat to replace us."

Lily looked positively ill, "That's terrible! They're talking about kids! Younger classmates."

Severus chuckled, they it held no mirth, "Everyone is expendable to You-Know-Who, he can find more in no time at all, be it through fear, bribery, or even imperious. What are a few students lives in the exchange for his grand design?"

"I take it that's why you never told the Aurors about any of them when you turned your back on You-Know-Who for me," Lily guessed.

Severus nodded his assent, "It's not just me who would be endanger, but anyone I care about. If I fled, they'd just target my loved ones as punishment. It's better they all be caught in the act and arrested that way."

"So who do we have left?" Lily asked, looking over the list.

"Not many," Severus replied, "Most just aren't trustworthy or reliable for the job. I'd say Malfoy, but even if he had been trusted with more than one horcrux, chances are whenever You-Know-Who finds out about the diary, he won't have trust in Lucius much longer. Meaning it would be moved to someone else, if it wasn't already with them to start with."

"Why didn't you cross off Bellatrix?" Lily asked, "She's a known Death Eater now since she assisted in freeing Avery and Mulciber. The ministry would search her in a heartbeat."

"If they could find her," Severus pointed out, "She'd been missing since she made her big show of breaking those two out. Apparently, her brother in law Lucius is claiming to have had no idea she was in league with the Death Eaters. Her sister Narcissa is claiming the same, they're still playing the ministry as upstanding, law abiding citizens and they've got enough of them foolded."

"What about Lestrange's brother?" Lily asked.

Rabastan's playing the dismayed, grieving brother. He's acting surprised that they were ever in league with You-Know-Who and has made public statements wishing for the safe capture of his sibling and sister-in-law to face the consequences of their actions. He's got enough money to get the daily prophet to spin any sob story from him that makes him look innocent."

I think that's why Thea's parents were so eager to marry her off to him," Severus continued.

"Why?" Lily asked curiously.

"Well clearly they're on You-Know-Who's side," Severus stated, "He seeks out so many followers of pureblood because their wealth gives him access to heavily warded manors to conduct his business in, money to pay off the corrupt…and the rights to Goblin guarded vaults to hide things in," he cast a knowing glance at Lily.

Severus pushed on, "Rabastan's family assets are needed for Riddle's plans and he can't use them if everything is seized by the ministry in a raid. Therefore, they need him to look good; marrying him off to someone close with several muggleborns and me makes him seem more on the light side due to Thea's on alignments. Without irrefutable proof that Rabastan is on his brother and sister-in-law's side, the ministry can't demand a search of his home and assets for anything."

"Meaning a horcrux could be safely tucked away in the Lestrange family vaults," Lily realized, "I don't think we'd ever be able to get past all those defenses to steal it."

"We'll have to worry about the 'hows' some other time," Severus concluded, "For now, narrowing down the 'whos' will at least give us people to keep an eye on. And while we're at it, there's one big 'what' that I'm trying to puzzle out."

"What is it?" Lily asked.

Severus picked up the arrest picture of Marvolo Gaunt again, holding a magnifying glass over it, "That."

Lily followed Severus gaze. Just above his finger was the ring, the image enlarged by the glass. The details were still hard to make out, but there appeared to be something etched into the surface of the rings large stone center.

"It looks sort of like this," Severus explained, pointing to his notebook. On it was a sketch of a triangle with a line going vertically up the center, a circle around the whole thing.

Lily cocked her head, staring at the symbol in puzzlement, "What does it mean?"

Severus scratched his head, "I don't know. There's not much information on it out there accept that it might have been associated with the Peverell family, but even then, one of the only sources I have for that claim is Gaunt himself."

He pulled out a case file Simone had managed to knick him from her father back during school, "In Ogden's initial meeting with the Gaunts, Marvolo claimed the symbol on the ring was the Peverell coat of arms, but it looks nothing like the one according to history."

Severus opened up the book he got from Diagon Alley depicting ancient bloodlines; something he'd bought back in his second year at the behest of Malfoy.

He pointed to the actual Peverell coat of arms, a piece featuring the traditional shields with various animals and flora surrounded by filigree and Latin credos.

"See," Severus said, "Nothing like this weird symbol, but Gaunt seemed adamant that that was what it represented in some way."

Lily picked up some of the arrest report, "That is really strange, but then again, Gaunt was said to be a batty old sort—Sev, look!"

Lily slammed the page she was holding down, searching frantically around their research space, "Where's the magnifying glass?"

Severus handed it to her with a raised brow, "Right here. Why?"

Lily didn't reply, instead snatching up the magnifier and bending over the page in her hands.

"There it is," Lily breathed. She grabbed hold of Severus's collar, yanking him closer, "Look, it's right there."

Severus frowned at the manhandling but obliged, squinting down at the paper Lily practically pressed into his face.

"Do you see it?" Lily asked eagerly.

"I hardly know what I'm supposed to see," Severus answered, "You didn't exactly explain yourse—what is that?"

The picture Lily held appeared to be another taken at Marvolo and Morfin's apprehension. It showed the two men bodily taken from their homes in shackles, while Merope lingered in the background by the door, the picture of downtrodden timidity.

But that wasn't what caught Severus attention. Far back through the doorway, illuminated by the flashing cameras was a crude etching of sort. Then another. And another. They almost looked like—

"It's the same symbol," Severus breathed, bringing the magnifying glass closer, "The one on the ring, it's all over the walls."

"Here's something from the report," Lily said, handing Severus a different paper, "It doesn't describe what it looks like, but reporters said the walls were covered in scratches just about everywhere."

Severus shook his head, gob smacked, "It's all over the place. Look at the death report for when Marvolo was found dead in his chair, see the picture; those symbols cover the whole house on the inside."

"And they seemed to still be there when Morfin was arrested for the Riddle family murders," Lily added, thumbing through that report, "There in the pictures of him being hauled away too…but they sort of look a little less fresh."

Lily picked up a picture from Marvolo's death report and Morfin's arrest for the Riddle murders.

"Look," she said, placing them next to the picture from Marvolo's arrest, "These all contain relatively the same area of the sitting room. Between Marvolo's arrest and his death, more symbols appeared, as if he was still carving them everywhere. But after his death…years passed between that and Morfin being framed, yet there's nothing new carved, in fact the old carvings were starting to rot away with the rest of the building."

"So it was Marvolo's obsession alone," Severus surmised, "Perhaps not even his son knew what the symbol meant."

"But Marvolo clearly believed it stood for something," Lily pointed out, "Some of these looked like they were scratched in with fingernails."

"Sev," Lily said hesitantly, "Do you think Riddle ever figured out what it meant?"

Severus looked down on the image, "The question is: if he does, is that good or bad for everyone else?"

I know Severus and Lily are piecing together potential horcrux leads pretty quickly while Dumbledore and Harry took FOREVER, but keep in mind, Dumbledore was leading an entire Order during both wars, and before Severus switched sides, he didn't have any real dedicated spy to help gather information, even if he kept Snape in the dark. Basically, Dumbles did a lot on his own in the early years, mainly because he didn't seem to think it privy to share what he knew. Severus has surrounded himself with some of the brightest wizards and witches of his generation and they're all working together.

So our buddies have discovered the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Wonder how long it will be before they figure out what it means.

It really did strike me as odd that in canon Bellatrix remained free for so long in the first wizarding war considering her open and obsessive devotion to Voldemort. I'm surprised it took her torturing the Longbottoms to get her locked up, surely someone so fanatically would have been running rampant without even bothering with a mask because she was too proud of her allegiance to wish to hide it. I can only assume to kept a low profile solely on the command of Voldemort who needed his lieutenant out of prison to carry out his most important tasks (I'd say he wanted her out of prison to have access to her homes and wealth for his cause, but chances are her and her fantical husband had already granted him unimpeded access to all that.

Review please :)